“Businesses File Claims Against County - Bakersfield Channel” plus 4 more

Businesses File Claims Against County - Bakersfield Channel
Road test: CoPilot Live navigation app for iPhone - CNET News
Auto Club Speedway Welcomes Copart as Title Sponsor for NNS Race - Who Won
ACT Double Header Labor Day Weekend - Who Won
New Program Lets Vehicle Buyers Negotiate Prices Online with ... - PR Inside

Businesses File Claims Against County - Bakersfield Channel

Posted: 02 Sep 2009 06:15 PM PDT

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Road test: CoPilot Live navigation app for iPhone - CNET News

Posted: 02 Sep 2009 10:58 AM PDT

CoPilot Live's map view could use some cleanup and suffers some lag when switching between the vertical and horizontal positions.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)

CoPilot Live is the fourth turn-by-turn GPS application with offline built-in maps for all of North America that I have on my iPhone 3GS. After Navigon, iGo My Way, and TomTom, I thought there would be nothing new I could find in a navigation app. I was wrong.

CoPilot Live offers a quick way to switch between modes of travel, which include auto, RV, motorcycle, biking, and walking. This makes the app ideal for getting around town, especially, say, if you need to change from driving a car to walking. The Navigon app offers a similar option, but you have to dig pretty deep into the menu to change your travel mode. With CoPilot you can do this anytime, even in the middle of an existing route, just via a few taps.

CoPilot Live offers a quick way to switch between different modes of travel.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)

Another nice thing about CoPilot is the Live Services option, which includes Live Weather and Live Link. Live Weather lets you see local weather or weather in a different city. Live Link connects CoPilot Live users, allowing them to send messages or share locations. I wasn't able to try this out as I was the only one I know who used the app during the testing.

The Live Services option, of course, requires an Internet connection and is only available when there's a cellular or Wi-Fi signal. Unfortunately, the most anticipated feature that also requires an Internet connection, the real-time traffic option, is not yet available, though there's a placeholder for it within the Live Services section of the app. According to ALK Technologies, maker of the CoPilot Live, this service will be added via an update that's coming out by the end of the month and costs another $20 per year, on top of the current $35 flat fee for the app. No other iPhone GPS apps currently offer real-time traffic.

Also missing is the text-to-speech feature, where the app would read out the name of the street. Nonetheless, the app has a wide selection of voices for you to choose from. It includes voices of 29 languages, each with a few options of accents, both male and female. It's probably the most versatile GPS app for the iPhone in terms of languages it supports.

Performance-wise, the CoPilot Live app launches fastest among all the GPS apps I've tried. It took only a few seconds on my iPhone 3GS (it might take a little longer on the iPhone 3G). The app is also very snappy when it comes to getting the GPS signal and routing. Unfortunately, the app's map view suffers from some lagging when switching between vertical and horizontal positions, and overall, the app seems rather buggy.

First off, sometimes during my many trips with the app, the map views appeared to hang as the red dot (representing the vehicle's current location) stopped moving completely, as though the car had stopped. Most of the time, it would take a couple of seconds for the map view to be live again and for the dot to become current with the car's location. Other times, I would need to restart the app. I'm not sure why this happened, but it could be because the GPS signal was temporarily lost.

The Live Services section doesn't yet include the much-anticipated Live Traffic feature.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)

The second issue, which is definitely a bug, was in the Quick Stop section, which is a fast way to access the app's point-of-interest database. When you hit the Hotel tab, restaurants come up, and when you hit the Restaurant tab, hotels come up. Oops.

The third issue I had with CoPilot is that it was really bad at reading the addresses from the phone's contacts. While TomTom had some problems with reading addresses that don't contain a ZIP code, CoPilot Live randomly had trouble reading most of the addresses in my contact list, including those the TomTom and the Navigon apps had no problem understanding.

CoPilot Live doesn't make manually entering an address easy because it doesn't use any information from the address listing that it can. In TomTom's case, it would reuse the information it does understand from the address, such as city, street, etc., making re-entering address less of a hassle.

I used the app both in the San Francisco Bay Area and in New York and in both places, CoPilot once in a while seemed to have outdated maps; its routing was not the greatest and was even wrong at times.

Overall, CoPilot Live has a lot of potential, especially with its Live Services section, but in its current state, it's not dependable enough to be used as a primary GPS application for your road trip. In the app's defense, it's by far the most affordable among all other iPhone GPS apps I've tested--at least for now. Nonetheless, I really hope that its pending update will work out all the bugs, making the app more of a reliable navigator.

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Auto Club Speedway Welcomes Copart as Title Sponsor for NNS Race - Who Won

Posted: 02 Sep 2009 10:08 AM PDT

Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Auto Club Speedway Welcomes Copart as Title Sponsor for NNS Race

SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY, Calif. -- As the result of an agreement between Auto Club Speedway, Camping World and Copart, the NNS race at Auto Club Speedway on Oct. 10 has been re-branded the Copart 300. The race was previously the Camping World RV Service 300 presented by Coleman.

We are proud to sponsor this race at Auto Club Speedway and look forward to some great competition on the track, said Copart President Jay Adair. Copart has embraced NASCAR racing as a great way to reach out to car enthusiasts and let them know about our extensive inventory of classic, early, and late model cars, trucks, SUVs, motorcycles, boats, snowmobiles, jet skis and recreational vehicles. NASCAR fans love cars and we have zillions to choose from!

Copart not only sells damaged cars for the insurance industry, but non-damaged cars from banks and finance companies, fleet operators, dealers, and the public. Buyers from all over the world are attracted to Coparts huge and diverse inventory and come to Copart knowing they can find any kind of vehicle they need quickly and easily at a wholesale price.

With a new NNS title sponsor and the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup coming to Auto Club Speedway this fall, dont wait to purchase great ticket packages to the Copart 300 and the NSCS race the Pepsi 500 call 800-944-RACE (7223), or visit www.autoclubspeedway.com.

Pepsi 500 weekend tickets start as low as $35 and as always, fans experiencing Auto Club Speedway can also take advantage of free parking, bring in their own food, or partake in the unbelievable menu items on site as well as other cost-savings opportunities while enjoying a full day of entertainment and fun at a fantastic family value.

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ACT Double Header Labor Day Weekend - Who Won

Posted: 02 Sep 2009 04:53 AM PDT

Wednesday, September 2, 2009
ACT Double Header Labor Day Weekend

WATERBURY, Vt. -- The upcoming Labor Day weekend will bring a major test for the American Canadian Tour (ACT) Late Model race teams. The first double-header weekend of the season takes place with a rain make up event at the Twin State Speedway in Claremont, NH on Friday night, September 4. Post time is 7 pm. Following the event at Twin State; the TOUR will head to Thunder Road for the 31st running of the Bond Auto Labor Day Classic 200 on Sunday, September 6, 2009.

This is just like the old days, when we used to race lots of double header weekends, said Tom Curley, President of the ACT. I actually liked doing a couple of races a weekend back when we ran the old NASCAR North and ACT Pro-Stock Tours. It seemed to build great camaraderie among the teams who helped put the cars together with each other, and certainly those weekends created some interesting short term rivalries, continued Curley.

Five points separate Milton, VTs Scott Payea and his closest competition with fellow Vermonter and 5 time ACT Champion, Brian Hoar. With the best pick 10 system used on the ACT, Hoar actually leads Payea by a single point if the worst point races of 2009 were dropped by the two drivers. I will just have to keep doing what I have been doing all season, said Payea. I am trying to win every race and not get caught up in the Championship point battle. I know winning the title is our goal, but the focus for our team has been to try and win races and finish well in every raceif we can do that, the points will follow, continued Payea. Payea has plenty of experience with how the points work. In 2008, the Payea team lost the ACT title by one point following the Chittenden Milk Bowl final event at Thunder Road. Patrick Laperle had to win the Milk Bowl to win the championship. He won the Milk Bowl and thus the championship.

Not one for being conservative in his young racing career, hard charger Joey Polewarczyk Jr. of Hudson, NH has taken over as the leader of the young guns on the ACT. Joey Pole, as he is known, is a two-time winner in ACT competition this season. I was pretty disappointed last Sunday at the Showdown when we started to overheat from a pin hole in the radiator. I am anxious to race at Twin State Speedway. Our team always likes the challenge that new tracks like Twin State present, and I cant wait to get back to Thunder Road, said Pole. He was leading the Mekkelsen RV Memorial Day Classic 100 before flying off the turn three burm with just a handful of laps left. The team led by his father, Joe Pole, rebounded at the Vermont Governors Cup in June, when they fielded a car for Tony Stewart in his appearance at Thunder Road. Joey Pole went on the win the Governors Cup. The 97 team trails front runner Payea by only 35 points with four events to go on the 2009 ACT schedule.

Post time for the Twin State 100 this Friday is 7 pm. There were 37 teams that attempted to qualify when the rains came on August 2. The gates will open at Thunder Road for Labor Day holiday camping at noon on Friday. Over 40 Late Models from throughout New England and Canada are expected to try and qualify for the Labor Day Classic.

Saturday will be qualifying for the Thunder Road regular divisions and Sunday will be a full day of racing with qualifying and the 31st Annual Bond Auto Labor Day Classic 200 for ACT Late Models. The Thunder Road Sportsman, Street Stocks and Warriors will also run features on Sunday, September 6. Gates open at noon on Saturday, and 10 on Sunday morning. Post time is 1:30 on Sunday. Advance tickets are now on sale at over 30 Bond Auto locations throughout Vermont and New Hampshire. There is a five-dollar ($5) discount if tickets are purchased in advance until 5 oclock on Friday, September 4, 2009. Day of race tickets will be $25 for the Bond Auto Labor Day Classic 200. The posted purse is over $40,000.00

For additional information contact the Thunder Road office at 802.244.6963 or media@acttour.com

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New Program Lets Vehicle Buyers Negotiate Prices Online with ... - PR Inside

Posted: 02 Sep 2009 04:17 AM PDT

2009-09-02 13:18:02 -

Until GM and eBay announced they had joined forces to allow shoppers to 'buy it now,' many of the automotive and RV dealers that Matt Christensen talked with believed that people wouldn't buy big ticket merchandise, such as a car or RV, online without first touching and feeling it.

Christensen, partner and Vice President of Sales for Vision TM Selling Systems

, sees mainstream auto and RV dealers beginning to understand that shoppers are approaching the buying process differently today than they did as recently as last year, and they're beginning to follow in the footsteps of more savvy dealerships who have already turned their websites into lucrative profit centers that keep their sales centers ka-chinging round the clock.

"Because buying just about anything on the internet today is so easy, a shopper's expectation for making an automotive purchase is usually much greater than what they find on most (automotive) websites," according to Joyce Dillingham, Christensen's partner and Vice President of Marketing for the company. "We designed Vision TM to give shoppers what they expect – the information that they want and the intelligent, interactive transactional tools that they need to essentially put a new vehicle in their shopping cart and check out."

Christensen added, "Dealers who view their website as an extension of their sales force know that you can't tell an internet shopper 'A salesperson will call or email you'. That message sends a buyer clicking off to another website without ever looking back. The Vision TM system invites shoppers to submit their offer to the dealer who can receive it, counter or accept the offer, and return it to the buyer on the same web page within minutes. It's a real-time, interactive process that gives dealers an unprecedented advantage over their counterparts."

Since the program was launched in late 2007, dealers have sold over 2,400 vehicles online using the Vision TM system. The program will be exhibited at the upcoming Digital Dealers, RVDA and RVIA trade shows. For more information, visit www.VisionSellingSystems.com : .

Organization: Vision TM Selling Systems and Vision TM software are products of Resurgence LLC, a privately held company with offices in San Diego and Fresno, California. The company specializes in internet sales for automotive and RV dealers and manufacturers.

Vision Selling SystemsMatthew Christensen, 559-248-2104Partner
and Vice President of Sales Matt@VisionDealers.com : mailto:Matt@VisionDealers.com